My Thoughts On The New LFG

The new Looking for Group feature has been out for a long enough time now for me to lay down my verdict on its usefulness. I haven’t used it enough to get the companion pet but I have run enough Heroics at this point to get lots of new gear on two of my characters. After dozens of runs across both of them I can safely say the new LFG is the greatest addition to this game in a long time.

Keep in mind that I’m almost 100% strictly a 5-man Heroic player in a guild with limited player activity so this tool is perfect for someone like me. It allows me to jump on at almost any time of the day and find something to do. While the queue times for a DPS class seem to be between five and ten minutes in my Battlegroup, on my Healer I’m seeing queue times measured in seconds and not minutes. It’s never been hard to find a group on my server as a Healer but it wasn’t unheard of to have to wait for 30 or more minutes as a DPS class. Now that the new LFG is composing groups out of players from multiple realms that long wait has been eliminated from the game and I couldn’t be happier.

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Christmas Time In The World Of Warcraft

The Christmas themed in-game holiday, Winter Veil, is currently underway and along with it comes plenty of activities for all of the achievement hungry players out there. I’m personally not a big fan of these world events but I know a lot of people are striving to finish “What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been” and feel almost obligated to complete each one.

Don’t forget that as the holiday comes to a close the giant Christmas trees in Ironforge and Orgrimmar have gift boxes underneath them. This part of Winter Veil runs from December 25th to the end of the holiday on January 2nd. The gifts range from companion pets to holiday themed food items. For the last two years, the most rare of the companion pets has been pretty excellent so I am looking forward to what this year has in store. In 2007, the pet was a small clockwork robot and last year it was a remote controlled car.

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Say Hello To The New Economy!

So I totally bought the new vanity pets being sold online at the Blizzard Store. I bought Lil’ K.T. for myself and the Pandaren Monk for my girlfriend. It was an instant purchase and no-brainer for me since we’re two avid companion pet collectors and, honestly, the price wasn’t outrageous enough to deter me.

I have purposefully avoided everyone else’s comments or thoughts on this new microtransaction movement in the game. I would imagine most players are angry and upset over this money play by Blizzard. Well, I’m of the total opposite opinion on this. These pets don’t give you an advantage and anyone who argues that this lays the groundwork for that to eventually happen is just overreacting and speculating at this point.

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Quick Impressions Of Patch 3.2

I managed to get the patch yesterday on my Mac with little difficulty so I was able to jump right in as soon as Greymane was up and check things out. Here are my impressions of Patch 3.2 after a few hours of play.

Champion’s Seal Loot

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When Does This Tournament End?

I don’t know about all of you but I am officially, as of today, sick and tired of the Argent Tournament. At this point I’ve Championed the major cities on two of my characters and just started the whole process over again on my Level 79 Death Knight. I’m ready for the Valiant quests now but I just can’t go on. What originally was an effort for some cheap experience points to hit Level 80 has turned into a mental burden.

My Hunter has 300 Champion’s Seals and my Priest has 100 of his own. What in the world am I going to do with all of those? I don’t like any of the mounts and I don’t need any of the gear so we’re down to vanity pets (of which I have more than enough) and tabards and banners. I say “No thanks” to those two items as well.

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My Take On Wintergrasp Weeklies

By changing the current Wintergrasp dailies into weekly quests Blizzard is attempting to not only cut down lag in the zone but also promote interest in the existing Battlegrounds. I’m all for both of those motives but I think the way they’re handling this is kind of a sad attempt at making things better.

Cutting Down Lag

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Controlling The Addon Community

Before I get going on this topic, anyone who hasn’t caught the latest news out of Blizzard concerning their new policies towards addons should check out this summary at MMO Champion. I’m going to break some of these bullet points down from the perspective of not only a WoW player but also as a professional software developer.

The New Rules

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The 3.1 PTR Has Arrived

The 3.1 PTR is up and running, as I’m sure most of you are aware of by now. MMO Champion is, as usual, totally on top of things and posting up-to-the-minute information as more and more details about the changes to the game are coming in. If you don’t want to have any of the new patch content spoiled for you I strongly, strongly suggest you stay away from sites like MMO Champion and WoW Insider for awhile now.

I’m not only anxious for the content of the 3.1 patch but also to see how effective this round of testing is going to be. I haven’t hidden my dissatisfaction with the last few patches and their apparent lack of quality testing. Hopefully, this time around with 3.1, there are better efforts at not just bug reporting but bug fixing as well.

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